The National Institutes of Health has launched a $1 million Technology Accelerator Challenge (TAC) to spur the design and development of non-invasive, handheld, digital technologies to detect, diagnose, and guide therapies for diseases with high global and public health impact.

Most medicines work by binding to and blocking the effect of disease-causing molecules. Now, to accelerate the identification of potential new medicines, bioengineers have created a computer model that mimics the way molecules bind.

Bruce Tromberg’s words drew murmurs of recognition from a crowd at the Photonics West conference in San Francisco, US, where he opened a packed Saturday afternoon of talks on entrepreneurship in healthcare photonics.

Promising intracellular protein-based therapeutics have been of limited use due to the difficulty of delivery into diseased cells. Now bioengineers have developed nanoparticles that can deliver these therapeutics to their targets—avoiding degradation and toxic interactions with healthy tissues.

Millions of people are treated with antibiotics each year for infections or as a preventative measure. Two teams of NIBIB-funded scientists have been working to find alternative solutions for treating bacterial infections, especially antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Neurologists have observed reduced neural activity during non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). Now MRI imaging during NREM reveals an exchange between brain blood and cerebrospinal fluid that may function to remove neurotoxic waste products.